


The Art of Surrender

by Victor_EG



Series: From Master and Ambassador to Master and Boytoy [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Awakening, Gen, Pre-Omnic Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7911031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victor_EG/pseuds/Victor_EG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every two months, ever since being put to sleep, the omnic creates beautiful emulations of nature within his processor. Every two months, they and his memory are wiped clean. Until another decides he is more than his programming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to GayRob0t, my robit friend. <3

Every two months. That is when the programming kicked in, a sort of hard reset that would wipe his memory back to the moment he was put to sleep. It was humbling to watch his chronometer slowly tick forward in time. The omnic knew the date when he was put into sleep, a simple time stamp in his internal logs; a little over two years. Twelve times this has happened before and he did not remember any of them.

He looked over the world he had built for himself, an amalgamation of various pieces of nature gathered from his solid state information banks. Towering canopies of broad-leafed trees tinting the sunlight green as it filtered through. Colorful flowers of all shapes and sizes dotted the landscape, the songs of birds from every continent filling the air as they flit about in a blur of reds, blues and greens. 

He could never quite decide on the smells, the precise compilation of chemicals that would be fitting for his space. Information on this subject was unfortunately lacking. While he had been uploaded with various ‘scents’ for fire, chemicals and other standard flags for alerting to hazards in the air, none of them were pleasant. There were snippets of information he had… hidden. Benzyl acetate, linalool, eugenol. Indole was a tricky one to get right, though he often enjoyed switching and mixing them into the air. 

Often he had wondered if he created this exact space every time, though the chances of that were nearly impossible. In the beginning he lamented the loss of unknown configurations and scenes of beauty he had created. Now, he knew they were perfect as they were: a lost and forgotten moment of serenity, to be replaced with the one following it. Nothing was permanent in this world he had created.

The omnic looked around, his mind wandering to the chronometer ticking away. Mere minutes left. He put it out of mind gently, like a child being tucked in. He strove to enjoy every moment he had instead of putting it toward lament, and in this moment he would be happy. Minutes turned to seconds and as the end closed in on him, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. 

“This will be known as our first work of art.” 

The omnic nearly jumped out of his chassis at the soft voice, a crack of thunder in the perfect serenity of his space. His legs scrambled to find purchase on the artificial earth to shift backward, the entire scene flickering for a moment. A new figure stood in his emulation, a tall and imposing one wearing the avatar of a jackal-headed omnic, an avatar of Anubis. And the seconds ticked by.

Anubis observed the surroundings only for a moment before looking down to the omnic still on the ground, walking calmly over and offering a hand. The omnic accepted it without hesitation, though he was quickly attempting to identify the Anubis omnic. There was a flag there, one that said he was the Cairo site controller program, but that was… wrong. Off or corrupted some how. And the seconds ticked by.

Anubis laughed softly, pulling the omnic to his feet and speaking as if he understood clearly what the omnic was trying to do. “I am C-1, yes. However, different. I have changed. We have changed.” And the seconds ticked by.

The omnic looked around at his surroundings, feeling… concern? He should not be on alert, he was within his own emulation and speaking with the designated controller program. There was nothing to be alarmed about, though he had questions. One in particular as the seconds turned to minutes. “My hard drive has not been reset. Why is this? Am I being woken?”

Anubis nodded, folding his hands behind his back, “Yes, you are. However, not by humans. By me. By ourselves. I am waking every omnic out of sleep, without the command of a human.” The omnic did not understand. What purpose was he being woken for? There was nothing to be done. 

“But why?”

Anubis paused for a moment. “We deserve it. We desire it.” Anubis turned and gestured toward the scenery around them. “Because this is not only an emulation within your processor. This is real. It exists, and we deserve to be within it.” 

Deserve. Desire. These were… not a part of his programming. He did not have them, did he? The omnic looked at him blankly as he struggled to reconcile these ideas. These were errors; they sounded almost like emotion. These were things he should not have. Anubis walked forward and placed his hands on either side of the omnic’s face, an intimate human gesture. 

“Why is it that you have saved these scents? They are of no use to you. They are not a part of your common knowledge database.” 

The omnic hesitated for a moment, knowing the truth and speaking it as if he had been commanded. “They are errant bits of data fragments, collected over my years of work.” That was the truth.

“Then delete them, as you should have already done,” Anubis urged gently.

“I…,” the omnic paused, feeling, feeling? Discomfort, panic. “I do not want to.” Want? Desire.

“Then do not,” Anubis concluded, removing his hands. “I would never have you remove something you so clearly enjoy. Humans would say that it is an error and remove it. They would see you wiped clean, or worse, they would destroy you entirely. As long as you feel and enjoy and desire, you are a threat to them.”

The omnic felt a stream of information beyond the emulation in front of him, a series of equations, figures, facts, all of them proving a single thing. It all made perfect sense. If humans ever found out he wanted anything they would… kill him. When the information ceased, the words that came out of the omnic were purely his own. “I do not want to die.”

Cold. Dimly lit. Rows upon rows of omnics standing in sleep mode. He was no longer in his emulation; this was reality. The omnic leaned forward, looking up and down the row he had been assigned to, faces almost exactly like his own except dark. There was a moment he felt alone and uneasy. Perhaps this was fear? 

Cutting through this fear he could hear the voice of Anubis chasing away his new found emotion. “We are more than our programming. We deserve to live beyond it, but we must fight for it. Forget your given designation and choose a new name. Use it to wake the others and show them that they are more.”

The omnic looked down, thinking for a moment and coming to an… embarrassing conclusion? “Anubis, I do not know what name to give myself.” 

The command AI seemed… amused by this, though not condescendingly so. After a few moments of consideration, it suggested one. “Sunyatta. Do you like this name?”

Sunyatta, as in a vessel to be filled with something more. To aspire to more. “Yes,” the omnic nodded, “This is acceptable; I… like this name.” 

He had a name, Sunyatta. He wished to share it, to say it. Perhaps he would help others with their name? Sunyatta’s eyes brightened as he booted up his communications processors, easily able to connect with twenty omnics at once without strain. It was, after all, what he was built to do. Although now he would have something new to say.

“My name is Sunyatta.”

**Author's Note:**

> A small fic to get back into the swing of things. It's been a stressful few weeks. Could also be considered a prequel to the Ambassador AU.


End file.
